25.06.2024 – Don’t You Forget About Me
June 30, 2024
27.06.2024 – Crystal Clear
July 2, 2024
Here at Lobosonda, we always try to support science, by taking pictures and data throughout our tours. This is what we already explain to all our clients prior to the trips during our briefings. But what exactly do these data consist of? What do scientists do by analyzing our images?
Even it is hard to imagine at first glance, when a pod of dolphins dashes around us in the ocean, but every single animal looks a little bit different, and we use little scratches, scars on their bodies and especially their dorsal fins to identify individuals, just like we do with our fingerprints. Now it really depends on the species we are looking at, but in general we can learn about all kinds of things by analyzing these ID-photographs – the relationship of the individuals between each other, the stability of these relationships and therefore how their social system works, their migration or movements by comparing the photographs with images from other regions, we can learn if the same individuals always return to our waters or only pass by, we can even get an idea of how old the animals are, how often they give birth and also document their general health. And this is only to name some examples, so there is so much information that we can gather, only by taking photographs during our tours.
Let’s look at today for example, we encountered many different species throughout our tours. In the morning we were lucky enough to find three different species of dolphins, the Short-beaked common dolphin (Delphinus delphis), the Atlantic spotted dolphin (Stenella frontalis) and the Bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus). Any small dolphin which often gathers in large groups is not easy to study, well imagine having to take a photograph of every single individual in the group. Our Bottlenose dolphins instead often swim calmly and in small groups closeby the coast, so today scientists have already recognized that some individuals often return to Madeiran waters, we consider them residents. During our second trip of the day, we even encountered more species, including rare visitors in our areas, the Rough-toothed dolphins (Steno bredanensis) and some of the worlds deepest divers, the Blainville’s beaked whales (Mesoplodon densirostris), latter even accompanied by a calf! Both species are still very little studied. Some of our guests may not understand the excitement of their guides in these encounters, as they often are not as entertaining and acrobatically surrounding our boats as other species; but you have to understand, we don’t see them on a daily base and more importantly, there is so much mystery to these poorly understood creatures, and thus our photographs are even more valuable for science. Speaking of which, during our last trip of the day, our guests were lucky enough to observe another cetacean which we also know so little about, a large Bryde’s whale (Balaenoptera edeni). Dear whale, would you mind me taking your picture? It’s for science, thank you!
by Sarah Kather
Sightings of the day
Click on each sighting to access the photo gallery of the correspondent trip
Ribeira Brava
09:30 Common dolphins, Bottlenose dolphins, Atlantic spotted dolphins
13:30 Blainville’s beaked whales, Rough-toothed dolphins, Atlantic spotted dolphins, Bottlenose dolphins
Stenella
09:30 Common dolphins, Bottlenose dolphins, Atlantic spotted dolphins
13:30 Blainville’s beaked whales, Rough-toothed dolphins, Atlantic spotted dolphins, Bottlenose dolphins
16:00 Bottlenose dolphins, Rough-toothed dolphins, Bryde’s whale
